The Flood

When talking about Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, what immediately comes to mind are lace, tall wigs, flamboyant clothes and colours, Versailles, or… the guillotine. Here, between these two extremes, exists a middle ground, a period seldom explored: the few months when the last king and queen of France were imprisoned, with their two young children, in a black castle on the outskirts of Paris, awaiting their executions.

Freely inspired from the writings of Cléry, Valet to the King until his death, Gianluca Jodice’s film retells the days spent awaiting trial by Louis XVI, his wife Marie Antoinette and their children after being arrested and imprisoned in the Temple Tower, a sinister castle in Paris. Far from the splendour of Versailles, they are isolated and vulnerable for the first time in their lives…